The finds of fibulae from archaeological sites supervised by the National Museum of Kruševac originate from the sites of the settlements which were the centers of agricultural production in the fertile region of Pomoravlje between the establishment of Roman government and the Early Byzantine period. The fibulae found at the sites in the most fertile areas of the Morava River valley are the most eloquent witnesses to this development. The sites in question are "Konopljara" in the village of Čitluk and "Grabak" in the village of Počekovina. The largest deposit is the Roman Praesidium Dasmini, discovered in the village of Novi Bračin, lying on the track of the highway. During late antiquity, there was a rising interest in the Balkan provinces, which was also reflected in Roman crossbow fibulae, discovered at these sites. They indicate the presence of military officers in this part of the Empire at the very end of antiquity, during the fourth century A.D. This was also the time when fortified settlements were built, mainly at high points. During the Migration period, the life in these settlements was intensified. The most common finds from this period are Early Byzantine fibulae with the foot bent back to touch the bow and wrapped or tied around it.

The paper explores the decoration found on two identical rings, one made of gold and the other made of silver. The rings have profiled, octagonal head featuring a coat of arms consisting of a crest in the form of a wolf, a helmet and an escutcheon with inscribed Latin letter P. The wolf is depicted in profile as a standing half-figure with protruded forepaws. The head of the ring is mounted on a neck and shoulders forming a unity, gradually narrowing into a hoop. The wider part in the middle of the hoop is in the form of the Hercules knot. The hoop is entirely fluted, and stylised branches with blossoms are carved on the prominent parts of three-sided shoulders. The inscription which could be translated ”My dear ring” is engraved around the heraldic feature on the head. Inscribed on both sides of the hoop are modified verses from the Gospel of Luke (1:38) which could be translated: ”I am the Lord's maidservant, may it be with me in accordance with your words!” The Hercules knot and the verses spoken by Holy Mother in the Annunciation suggest that these are wedding rings reflecting the trend supported by the Church: the husband should wear a gold ring and the wife an identical silver one.

Kolekcija dela zlatara iz Nirnberga, predstavljena u ovom radu, koja se nalazi u Odseku za dekorativnu umetnost i materijalnu kulturu Narodnog muzeja u Krakovu, primer je zbirke koja se lagano razvijala tokom gotovo čitavog XX veka. Istorija akvizicija predmeta i njihov opis omogućavaju nam da procenimo stanje zbirki primenjene umetnosti koje se nalaze u ovom muzeju i njihovih umetničkih kvaliteta, kao i da lociramo ove predmete u kontekstu delâ koja reprezentuju određene radionice.

Nesumnjivo najvredniji primeri srebrnine iz Nirnberga jesu oni koji dolaze iz nekadašnjeg Muzeja kneževa Čartoriskih, u vlasništvu Fondacije kneževa Čartoriskih, a koji se danas čuvaju u Narodnom muzeju u Krakovu.

Zahvaljujući brizi o ovoj zbirci u Muzeju, došlo se u posed dva dela Konrada Kerstnera, sa dve varijante pečata ovog zlatara. Dve posude koje su napravljene u radionici Zigmunda Birfrojnda, koje potiču iz zbirke slikara Jana Matejkamz, nesumnjivo su vredni primeri nirnberškog zlatarstva.

Među predmetima koji se čuvaju u glavnoj zbirci Narodnog muzeja, dva do danas sačuvana dela jevrejske umetnosti iz radionica Milnera i Geca posebno su vredna pažnje, naročito kada se uzme u obzir gubitak koji je ova umetnost pretrpela tokom Drugog svetskog rata. Mala predela sa predstavom Stradanja Hrista, koja nosi oznaku iz ranog XVI veka, izuzetno je delo, bez analogija, i najdragoceniji je primer nirnberškog zlatarstva iz kolekcije ovog Muzeja.

Zbirka Muzeja kostima u Madridu (Museo del Traje) spaja istorijski kostim, tradicionalne odevne predmete, savremenu modnu odeću i etnografske predmete. Nastala je u drugoj i trećoj deceniji XX veka, nakon veličanstvene izložbe istorijskog i tradicionalnog kostima održane u Madridu 1925. godine. Ubrzo nakon toga, novi Muzej kostima pretvoren je u etnografski muzej (Muzej španskog naroda), a sve bogatijoj zbirci kostima pridodati su i etnografski predmeti. Zbog izbijanja Španskog građanskog rata, radovi su obustavljeni, pa Muzej nije otvorio svoja vrata sve do 2004. godine.

Kao i na samom početku, 1925. godine, stalna postavka Muzeja posvećena je kostimu. Organizovana je hronološki, počevši od najstarijih odevnih predmeta – nekoliko izuzetnih dublea, žaketa, rukavica i kitnjastog bonea, iz XVI i XVII veka.

Izdvojiti samo neke od preko četiri stotine odevnih predmeta iz XVIII veka iz zbirke muzeja nije nimalo lak zadatak. Tu su bogato ukrašene haljine, stotine prsluka i žaketa ukrašenih finim vezom, kao i mnogobrojni primeri zanimljive raskošne odeće u tzv. „maho“ stilu.

Tekstil je osetljiv materijal. Radi konzervacije, kostimi u stalnoj postavci menjaju se na svake dve godine. Muzej sâm izrađuje lutke za izlaganje, napravljene po meri. Prostor u kojem se čuvaju kostimi organizovan je u skladu sa prirodom materijala u svakoj zbirci. Istorijski kostimi se čuvaju u zasebnim vrećama od beskiselinskog pamuka. Dobro očuvani odeveni predmeti okačeni su na obložene vešalice, dok se predmeti koji nisu najbolje očuvani, kao i veći odeveni predmeti, čuvaju u posebnim kutijama ili u fiokama.

Mnogi od kostima iz zbirke mogu se videti na internetu. Muzej kostima iz Madrida jedan je od partnera u projektu Eurepeana Fashion, evropskom projektu koji ima za cilj da objedini onlajn zbirke mode iz vodećih evropskih institucija. Za dve godine, veliki deo odevnih predmeta iz zbirki Muzeja kostima, od predmeta koji datiraju iz daleke prošlosti do savremenih kreacija, odnosno od XVI veka pa sve do danas, biće dostupan posredstvom Europeana Fashion portala.

Based on the up to date scholarly research in the field of visual culture and aesthetics of porcelain, this essay represents, at the same time, an analysis and an attempt to interpret the porcelain serving set of Comte d'Artois from Sevres, within the frame of the politics of presentation and collection practices of the Yugoslav court during the fourth decade of the 20^th century.

Starting from the various scientific approaches in the research of the 18^th -century fascination with porcelain as a specific cultural phenomenon, we attempt to discover the mechanisms that serve as driving forces for collectors and that foster their wish to possess such objects.

In the first part of the essay, we point to the basic facts about the production of porcelain in France, as well as about the formation of the prestigious Royal Manufacture at Sevres, where the serving set of Comte d'Artois was produced. It the second part of the essay we deal with the varied approaches to interpretation of the Early Modern craze for porcelain, mostly delineating its importance in cultural and sociological frames. Special segment is dedicated to creation of this particular serving set, its high artistic production and craftsmanship, as well as to its history. In the essay, we point to the latest scholarly research that shows that the wish to possess and collect porcelain during Early Modern era was directly related to the emphasis on political power. In this sense, we accentuated the research in the field of the Early Modern history of emotions, which points to the introduction of new model of emphasis on political power through the control of emotions, in which porcelain played a prominent role. Although the circumstances were quite different in the time of Prince Pavle, the assumption is that the important motif for the selection of this particular porcelain serving set was the fact that it was created for the Spanish court, at Comte d'Artois' commission. The political and historic circumstances during the Prince's regency point, by all means, to his political presentation in which the important segment was the choice of objects for the state art collection of the White Palace.

Saint Rémi's chalice, held by the treasury of the cathedral of Reims and used in the coronation of kings of France between the 14^th century and Charles X's coronation, in 1827, made a deep impression on French and European people. Due to the fact that it was confused with the Vase of Soissons, it became the mythical object brought into relation with the founding of the Kingdom of the Franks, the first Christian kingdom of the West. This vase was actually a product of a workshop in northern France manufactured during the first half of the 13^th century. The Gothic revival turned the eyes of artists towards medieval works and many architects and designers working for silversmiths were inspired by symbolically loaded liturgical objects, such as the chalice of Saint-Rémi, which was one of the most copied models. Since 1848, the publisher Adolphe Napoléon Didron and the architect Viollet-le-Duc presented it as an example of the peak achievements of medieval art in the 13^th century. The study presents the reinterpretation of this work by two French silversmiths who were very famous in the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries: the Parisian Poussièlgue-Rusand and Armand-Calliat of Lyon. The revival of the art inspired by the Middle Ages was a segment of the struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and the state anticlericalism.

In the middle of the 19^th century, the monks of the Monastery of The Patriarchate of Peć commissioned a throne for the miraculous icon of Virgin Hodegetria. It was made by Dmitar Stanišev, a woodcarver from the village of Tresonča near Debar, and later, in 1863, it was depicted and decorated by masters Konstantin and Ignatije from Veles. During the conservation treatment of this object, there appeared certain portions that were hidden by a piece of board, which was an addition of a later date. This newly-revealed segment was decorated in the painterly fashion and it corresponds to the appropriate function of the throne as Proskynetarion. Visually, constructively and iconographically, this throne matches the episcopal thrones of the Debar school of arts and crafts. At first, various scholars stated that this was at Episcopal throne, either giving only descriptions of it or only counting it among the monuments belogning to a specific time frame. Nevertheless, when compared to the iconographic characteristics of the Throne of Peć, one comes to the same conclusion. The Christological, i.e. arhieiron program, is present in all the elements of this throne. Lions and steps appearing on its base are the first, conspicuous, features of an episcopal throne. Eagles, snakes, or Evangelists in the upper zones are also signs that add to the recognition of an episcopal throne. The scene of the Mission of the Apostles, which indubitably points to the Christ the Archpriest who is sending his disciples to spread the God's word, is the ultimate feature that directs toward the stated conclusion. However, the very inscription designates this throne as the Virgin's. Even with the lack of such an inscription, it is clear that the throne of Peć is not of the arhieiron type, since it has neither seat nor the icon of Christ the Archpriest above it. It preserves the miraculous icon of Virgin Hodegetria to be bowed to, so the role of proskynetarion is clearly defined by the relic, that is, by its designated function.

One of the areas of the altogether extremely varied artwork of Anastas Jovanović comprised the designs for production and decoration of utility objects, of both sacral and profane use. Beside photography and lithography, this represented an additional field of Jovanović's pioneer activity in Serbian 19^th century art and visual culture. Anastas created these designs, which are preserved in several public and private collections today, during his sojourn in Vienna, from 1846 to 1860, and, to a large extent, under stylistic influences that came from the contemporary Viennese arts and crafts and the Central European applied arts. Although there are no preserved documents, we assume, with great deal of certainty, that there existed objects that were created after these designs, and that they were produced in Anastas' studio-workshop in Vienna, which was operational during the 1850s. The assumption is that Anastas made some of the objects for his Viennese maecenas, as well as for the members of the Obrenovic dynasty. It is without doubt that Anastas' workshop in Vienna supplied Serbian orthodox municipalities, while the art objects for the profane purposes were, as a matter of course, meant for a designated circle of consumers, coming from urban strata, and served for decoration and as objects of utility in their private abodes. Judging by their production, the applied stylistic elements and materials of which they were to be made, these objects belong to the same type of luxury objects of international provenance, which used to arrive in Serbia during the 19^th century, and that were either ordered or were simply imported goods. Related to a specific social group, i.e. to the members or urban class, the artfully decorated objects of European provenance, or the ones modeled after them, functioned as one of the forms of identification and differentiation this class from other social groups. These objects served to aesthetize the everyday life and common rituals, and this need stands in line with the ideals of the Enlightment that were also present in Serbian culture of the 19^th century. As the first and unique designer solutions in Serbian art and visual culture of the 19^th century, which have their parallels within the European scope, too, the designs made by Anastas Jovanović for decorative utility objects represent another aspect of his influence practice, although in the realm of visual culture and art, on the formation of Serbian culture of the 19^th century as a whole.

The Department of Textile and Costume of The Museum of Applied Arts in Belgrade holds a collection of women's footwear from the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century. The preserved footwear items were worn in Serbia and the region and they reflect the process of transformation of the Serbian bourgeoisie clothing from traditional Oriental into European fashion during the 19^th century. The items include not only the footwear made by traditional shoemakers worn as a part of urban dress: slippers, mestve and clogs, but also fashion footwear: shoes and boots mainly for special occasions, but worn casually, as well. Flat women's shoes from the first part of the 19^th century, walking boots from the turn of the 20^th century and evening leather and satin shoes with “Louis heel” from the early 20^th century, can be found among preserved fashion footwear items. Some of those from the beginning of the 20^th century were made not only by European shoemakers as H. Bauer and Bally, but also famous Belgrade high-end fashion stores importing and selling luxury fashion goods: “Kosta Nikolić i drug“, “Savčić i Nikolić“ and “Lazarević i Stojankić”. Most of the collection items were shown on “Oh, Those Shoes!” exhibition held in the Museum in 2013. Starting March 2015, the entire collection will be accessible on Europeana Fashion portal as a part of the project the Museum of Applied Art is taking part in as one of 22 partners from twelve European countries.

International competition held between August 1921 and March 1922, fundamental for designing the Master Plan of Belgrade, accepted in 1923 and approved in 1924, has been frequently mentioned in texts on development of Belgrade in the 20^th century. However, it has not been written enough about the competition entries and their authors. This is due to the fact that most of the drawings of competition projects have not been preserved and that textual explanations have mostly been written in French or German. This paper describes one of the awarded projects, with a motto “Royal Capital of the Karađorđević Dynasty“, submitted by two architects from Vienna, Emil Hoppe (1876–1957) and Otto Schönthal (1878–1961). It analyses the original textual explanation and almost unknown drawing of their project. Through the analysis of Hoppe's and Schönthal's competition project and the review of the architects' professional engagement in Belgrade, we shed some light on some important unknown facts and consequent assumptions about international competition itself, competition projects and their authors. Consulting forgotten and little known international and Serbian sources, this paper contributes to the better understanding of urban and architectural development of Belgrade between two world wars and paves the way for future research in this field.

Museums of the 21^st century as mediators between the history and the present promote the collecting policies aimed at acquisition, research and presentation of clothing with emphasis on its social and cultural import, as well as on changes that occur when pieces of clothing become museum objects. Pieces of clothing live two lives – during the "first one" they used to emanate their owners' messages and thus they played active roles in the eras they belonged to, while in the "second one", which starts with their entrance into a museum collection, they are assigned new roles – they become witnesses of past and they transform from subjects into objects. In the process of museum communication, i.e. at exhibitions, clothing becomes a symbol of past that links visitors to their own bygone while linking them, at the same time, to past of its owner.

Museum of Arts and Crafts possesses a rich collection of clothes and fashion accessories in which the Collection of Art Déco Fashion, with its more than 400 samples of female fashion clothing and fashion accessories, documents all the changes of fashion from the beginning of the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. These objects were acquired mainly during 1960s. The largest number of these objects is of Austrian provenance, created in Vienna, followed by the items created in Croatia, mainly in Zagreb.

The exhibition "Art Déco and Art in Croatia in the Interwar Period" was held in Museum of Arts and Crafts in 2011 with the intention to represent the relations and influences of art déco as style and/or phenomenon on the Croatian art and culture of living during the period between the World Wars. The most of the exhibited pieces of clothing were the ones that were musealised in the Collection of Art Déco Fashion of Museum of Arts and Crafts. They, with their provenance, changes in modeling, and with richness of their materials give the complete picture about rapid changes in fashion design during the period between the Wars. The choice of the pieces of clothing and their contextualization within the thematic whole of the popular culture offered the visitors true image of the phenomenon of art déco as it appeared in the fashion design.

The palace of “Riounione Adriatica di Sicurta” (“Adriatic Insurance Society”) from Trieste, better known as “Reuniona” or “Istra” in local jargon, is the most distinguished of all tall, spatially dominant and having a complex layout buildings built in Belgrade city centre between the two World Wars. Built at the corner of Obilićev Venac and Čika-Ljubina Street between September 1929 and April 1931, it has dominated the north-west end of the most important Belgrade square for eight decades, diminishing the visual supremacy of the older independent buildings. Inadequate in size for the free space surrounding the statue of Prince Mihailo, it forever changed the broader compositional hierarchy of the scattered and unfinished urban space by introducing new height relations. Although undoubtedly oversized and lacking stylistic harmony with the older buildings, products of a different, much more conservative time, due to its many attributes “Reuniona” represented an innovative urban phenomenon which changed the visual identity of the greater unity of the scattered square.

Future more extensive research of the architectural genesis of “Reuniona” palace, based on more extensive analysis of its original interior design and structural system, as well as documentation that could be beneficial in shedding some light on the identity of its authors, shall immensely contribute to present, mainly modest and incomplete, conclusions. Apart from the initiative shown by our experts, the participation of historiographers from Croatia and Italy is of a paramount importance for this challenging endeavour.